


The Fugitive

by PermianExtinction



Series: Know Thine Enemy [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 14:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16789084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/pseuds/PermianExtinction
Summary: On a remote base orbiting a planet the Resistance has made a temporary home out of, Rose makes a bizarre and unlikely discovery.





	The Fugitive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kereia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kereia/gifts).



> This fic is actually a brief sequel to a longer fic that I'm still working on, that hopefully will be done very soon!
> 
> But for now I ought to submit something so that I can add that longer fic later.

Rose Tico is on refuse duty, and she doesn’t mind at all, because the base here, one of many buildings from an old Resistance-repurposed refueling outpost in the Outer Rim, has some incredible views. The rock it was built on is a frigate-sized moonlet embedded in a gas giant’s rings, spinning with a twenty minute rotation period. Because of that rotation, going, or even looking outside makes some of Rose’s comrades space-sick, and she’s quite willing to take on the outdoor jobs for them, because she can stare for hours at the tumbling sky, watching the sunset-hued Object 810003 rise and set.

One of the most remarkable things about these rings is their atmosphere; they’re so thick with air particles that they produce a greenhouse effect and warm the moonlets. It’s still bitingly cold and anyone going out wears an insulated suit and sucks the occasional lungful of air from an oxygen mask, but some life forms have found a home here. The rocks are covered in long, thin, purple and green hairs of grass, which are grazed by tubby translucent sea-cow creatures drifting in the ring like hot air balloons. Their flesh looks as light as aerogel, and they don’t mind being approached. Rose expects she’ll miss them when they have to move on. 

There was a contest to name them. Plenty of people thought along the same theme: “obbles”, “borps”, “mooms”. The Resistance finally settled on “oobs”. 

A bigger oob has alighted on the far side of the Object, where the compost silo is, and its face is nuzzled into the grass growing around the structure. Rose navigates down carefully, climbing hand over foot, gripping the blades of grass as handholds.

“Hi, buddy,” she says brightly, as she floats past the creature, pulls the bag of food scraps off her back, and tugs the lid on the top of the silo open. 

First thought: _someone dumped a body in the compost!_  


Second thought: _there is a live person in the compost!_ Because unless she’s mistaken, it’s moving. 

“What the—!?” Rose lets go of the bag and leans over the lip of the silo entrance. The air smells thickly of fruity soil, and is warm from the reactions in the compost. She scrabbles around in the muck and manages to grab the pale wrist sticking out of the floating soup of debris. 

“Hey! Are you okay?” She braces herself and pulls the arm up, and the rest of the body attached to it. “How the hell did you get in—”

The man dangling from her grip is skinny, sallow, with hollowed cheeks, and mussed ginger hair. Barely conscious. Squinting vaguely at her.

Third thought: _General Hux of the First Order dumped himself in our compost!_

He takes several hours to wake up, after being dragged back to the base by a whooping, hollering Rose. “I found him in the _garbage!_ ” she yells in the face of Lieutenant Connix, who opens the door for her. The rest of the building, about fifteen people (mostly new recruits, except for Rose, Connix, and Rey) comms the news to the squads living on the other moonlet bases. 

Then Rose takes charge. “We _are_ going to keep him alive. No, I have no idea what the pfassk is going on, either, and we might have to evacuate, but he must have got here alone. We’d have star destroyers breathing down our necks if the Order found us.” 

Rey pulls her aside to speak with her privately. “Do you get the sense he’s trying to upstage us? In weirdest ways to infiltrate enemy territory?”

“I kind of do!” Rose agrees. The last time they met Hux in person, they’d been jointly pretending to be an eight-foot tall alien in purple robes.

Hux has taken up one of the spare beds, in a locked room, which Rose enters with her arms firmly crossed. The man is sitting up, wincing in dismay at the see-through blimp of an animal parked outside the viewpoint, ponderously nibbling on asteroid turf. 

“Eugh. That thing won’t stop… _looking_ at me.”

“That’s an oob,” Rose informs him. “Native species.” 

When Hux turns, he has humiliation and misery etched into his features. Creasing his stubbled jaw, tightening his lips. “You must be wondering.”

“How you got into the.” She snorts. “The compost.”

“I landed an escape pod on one of the other rocks, but the buildings were abandoned.” Hux draws his knees up slowly. “I ran out of power. I had to risk crossing the ring. When I found that bin I had almost frozen to death, and I thought I might recover there for a few hours, in the heat. The air was too thin, though… I must have been asleep for…” He scrapes his fingernails over his cheek, judging the growth of his beard. “A few days.”

“And how about the rest of the story? You know, the _why_ , as opposed to the _how_.” 

“Ren. I wanted to kill him for years, I’m sure he knew. It was only when I stopped. I stopped wasting time on jealousy and tried to do my damn job. That’s when Ren turned on me. Why is that?” He pushes the covers off his legs and stands up, even though he wobbles and slumps and clearly is recovering from the blood rushing from his head. 

“I have no idea how he thinks.” 

Hux takes a few steps, and buckles slowly to his knees. “Aah. Kriff.”

Rose could poke him with her shoe and probably topple him over. Right now he’s soft and falling apart. Like compost. “You need to eat.”

“Are you going to give me food? And shelter? I don’t have anything to bargain. You can do whatever you want with me.” And he sounds empty, immaterial, passive. Like the oob creatures living in this extraterrestrial biome. 

“Look _,”_ Rose says more curtly, seriously. “You’re right. We’re the nice guys. We’ll let anyone in as long as they really want to help. And I haven’t got the time or energy to clap you in binders and haul you off to a prison complex we don’t have, and I can’t kill you in cold blood. The jackbooted thugs of the galaxy have always taken advantage of that. You always imagine you can beg for mercy.” 

“Please.”

“And now I had another world to myself, and the First Order still lands and plants its flag.” 

“No, no, I’m not with the Order. I can’t go back.” 

She crouches down and, in a burst of spite, grabs his chin. “Can’t you? Aren’t you just waiting for the chance?” 

Hux blotches a vivid pink, and then his hands dart up to grab hers. His fingers clench into her skin, and he presses his teeth to her knuckles. “I’ll bite,” he hisses.

Rose freezes up. Then she tightens her fist. “Go ahead, freaky guy. Have fun.”

“Ugh!” Hux cries out in frustration and lets go. “I don’t understand! I don’t know how you can be like that. Letting anyone know what you’re really thinking or feeling—!”

Rose backs away, huffing sharply. “Because I won’t let you take that away from me. The Order tried to take everything else.”

“We did.” Hux pushes himself back upright and returns to his bed, sitting on it and glaring at the grazing oob. 

“I’ll come back later,” Rose finally says. “You can make your demands—”

“I don’t have any demands,” Hux snaps. Then he lays down on his side, facing away from her, and eventually continues more measuredly. “The only way I could be here by choice is if I lost all my wits, so I have.”

He has, Rose has to agree. But she notices that she’s actually enjoying the chance to probe the disgraced general’s ego. Though she imagines that will come back to bite her — literally — later on.


End file.
